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S14 - Episode thirteen "Lebanon” The 300th episode!

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN RETURNS FOR THE 300TH EPISODE – Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) look to occult lore for a solution to their latest problem, but instead of a resolution, they find much more than either of them had anticipated. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (John Winchester) guest stars. The episode was directed by Robert Singer and written by Andrew Dabb & Meredith Glynn. (#1413). Original Airdate 2/7/2019.

Here is a fan art poster for you to enjoy made by: Chris @stonewoodzri Chris's tumblr.

Regarding Dean's desire, is there any speculation to the end of the episode when John was returned in time to his car, does he remember what had happened? is there a possibility for Jeffrey Dean Morgan to return?

Yes, but he thinks it is a dream or does he? And I think this might help his return in some way. ;)
From an article: He said:
"I think it would create some problems for us, time travel-wise, if he remembered everything. He thinks it is a dream. And it didn’t change him, it didn’t change our history, but I would like to think it did, for maybe just a small amount of time, soften him toward Sam [and] Dean.
"The John we see in season 1 is very much not the John we’ve talked about who existed before Sam went away. That John was much more hard-edged… And I would like to think that, possibly, this dream, this experience that happened, marks that turning point."

Sydney Bucksbaum @SydneyBucksbaum 7 minutes ago
Episode 13 will be #Supernatural's 300th episode, and Robert Singer will be directing it. @jarpad says @JensenAckles wants a clip show where they dress in togas and call it "The 300." #SPN #SDCC18
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Natalie Fisher??? @nataliefisher12 hours ago
Guys, we are getting the Lebanon episode for 300. Outside perspective on what the hell the townsfolk think about the boys. Not quite as meta as 200, but more than 100. That is, if it doesn't all fall apart as the season progresses! Dabb seems uncertain, but that's the plan.
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Supernatural Boss Teases Episode 300: It Will Be 'Heartwarming, With Murder' from TVLine!

The series’ 100th (Season 5’s “Point of No Return”) was “very much a straight-up episode” of the long-running CW drama, while No. 200 (Season 10’s “Fan Fiction”) “went very much in the other direction, where it was very meta and a commentary on the show,” co-showrunner Andrew Dabb noted at San Diego Comic-Con. “For the 300th one, we want to do something that lies in the middle.”

That middle ground currently is shaping up to be an exploration of the Winchesters from an outsider’s perspective. “The idea kind of floating around right now is Sam and Dean, for years, have lived in the bunker, [which] is in a place called Lebanon, Kansas, which is a real town, a very small town,” Dabb shared. But for all the time the brothers have spent in the area, “we’ve never actually seen Lebanon, Kansas, on the show. We’ve never actually seen what these people in this town think of these two guys who drive this muscle car through. The dry cleaner [must think], ‘They have a lot of blood on their clothes. What’s going on there?'”

“So it becomes: How do these people view Sam and Dean — with Sam and Dean’s story in there, too,” Dabb continued. “We think it could be a real love letter to the show, in what we hope is going to be a very heartwarming way — with murder. Heartwarming with murder.”

Tomás Balmaceda @capitanintriga 21 hours ago
In this shed are kept 14 seasons of wardrobes #Supernatural. I think only the girlfriends of @awrod o @Gala_Cherry have more plaid shirts (thanks @MovistarArg for roaming to upload these joyitas)

This Impala never leaves the studio but there are filmed all the scenes "driving" thanks to this device that with motion and lights simulates that is in motion

Some data: There are six different Impala to do the show and since the series started the value of the used cars exploded because the fans usually buy it. There's even a business that Costumiza

Yesterday I visited the set of #Supernatural de @warnerchannella and was fascinated with the care and love with which they make this series that already has 14 seasons, which is not afraid to kill their protagonists (and revive them) & whose audience grows every season.

I'm interviewing the supernatural actors from @WarnerChannelLA and I got Mark Pellegrino. I'm holding on for explaining to him by the end of Lost.
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Question: Can you tell us if Castiel will be in Supernatural‘s 300th episode? Anyone else we’ll be excited to see? —Shannon
Ausiello: The answer to your first question is you betcha. “There’s a little bit of time travel that comes into play in the 300th episode, and we’ll see a different version of Cas,” his portrayer Misha Collins reveals. As for whether any familiar faces will return for the milestone installment, executive producer Brad Buckner would only say with a smile, “Maybe.”

The incredible accomplishment will be met with a special installment that will involve a twist for Cas. Misha Collins revealed:

There's a little bit of time travel that comes into play in the 300th episode, and we'll see a different version of Cas.

If your mind is racing, you are unlikely to be alone. Misha Collins' tease to TVLine is quite exciting. What it will mean for Dean and Sam's friend is another issue. But, it has the makings of something exciting for the character.

So far, we know that life in the Bunker will be the central focus of the 300th episode. The episode will linger on the guys' daily routines and regimens, per Hypable. All of which sounds ambitious and delightful. How time travel and viewers encountering a different version of Cas fits into that will be intriguing to discover. Granted, Misha Collins said there would be a "little bit" of time travel. So, not necessarily an episode full of it.

In a description of the episode, there is a mention of it exploring how people in Lebanon, Kansas perceive Sam, Dean, and Cas. There is also a bit about meeting a few old friends in the episode, per Collider. You know a good way to meet up with old friends? Time travel.

It is all setting up to be quite a tremendous episode for long-time viewers. Cas fans have got to be pleased to know that he will not only be featured in the 300th episode, but he will do so in what sounds like a significant way. How different will this other version be? Perhaps, this version of Cas is not a big fan of trench coats? That would be tragic.

Whatever the show gets up to with its time travel twist, it will be nothing shy of impressive. Supernatural has been on the air for 14 years and is showing no signs of stopping. To have accomplished that many episodes and still have fans on the edge of their seats is a major testament to the series and those who work on it.

The cast and crew recently celebrated the occasion on a red carpet. They have more than earned it. So, prepare to enjoy the suspenseful wait to see the landmark 300th episode, which will likely take "supernatural" restraint!

An air date for Supernatural's 300th episode has not yet been set. When it does air, it should do so in the series' usual time slot. New episodes of Supernatural air Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. The horror series is among many shows airing new episodes this fall and throughout the midseason, so be sure to keep up with everything coming your way in the next few months.

And “awesome” is something that can be said of the concept for episode 300. Written by Showrunner Andrew Dabb and Meredith Glynn, the episode will give us the perspective of the townsfolk of Lebanon, Kansas (the place the boys have called home in the bunker since season eight) on these weirdos in their midst.

Said co-showrunner and director of the episode Bob Singer, “They don’t quite know what these guys are. We’ll see the town for the first time, and then something happens that kind of turns the story on its head with a guest star that I think the audience will be happy to see.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan returning to Supernatural as John Winchester for 300th episode

Thus far, not much has been shared about Supernatural’s upcoming 300th episode, which is currently in production in Vancouver, but seeing as how the show loves to go big with its milestones — “Fan Fiction,” anyone? — it shouldn’t be too shocking that it’s pulling out all the stops for the hour. But John Winchester?! That’s the return fans have waited years to see.

To be exact, fans have waited more than 11 years, seeing as how John Winchester last appeared in the season two finale, “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2,” when he escaped through the open gate to Hell and helped his boys kill Yellow Eyes. Of course, that was after John’s death, which occurred in the season two opener, “In My Time of Dying” when John sacrificed himself to save Dean. Needless to say, there’s a lot Sam and Dean probably never got to say to their dad before he died. And now, they’ll finally have the chance.

Co-showrunner Andrew Dabb said in a statement: “We’re incredibly excited to have Jeffrey back for this milestone episode, and think fans will love what we have planned for his character… and a few other surprise guest stars.”

There are no details yet on how John will return or what it could mean for his boys, but we do know that Supernatural’s 300th episode, titled “Lebanon,” will air Thursday, February 7 at 8 p.m. ET.

YVRShoots @yvrshoots
#Supernatural is back filming season 14 in Vancouver next week.
What do we know about #SPN300 which wrapped just before the hiatus?
It features Lebanon, Kansas.
And Jeffrey Dean Morgan returns as Papa Winchester:: http://www.hollywoodnorth.buzz/2019/01/milestone-what-do-we-know-about-lebanon-the-300th-episode-of-supernatural.html

The real Lebanon, Kansas.

Supernatural filmed for several nights on south Burnaby’s Backlot town set (built for Watchmen) as Lebanon, Kansas.

I saw Supernatural filming there in Season 6.

Supernatural shot there until 3 a.m. one night.

YVRShoots @yvrshoots
JDM, are you there?#Supernatural300 still filming on the "Watchmen set" in south Burnaby tonight.
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The CW made Supernatural’s 300th episode a cornerstone of its May Upfront to advertisers in New York City.
Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins took to the stage to talk about it.
Gary Levin photo/@garyclevin.
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We have the video from Jeffrey Dean Morgan's visit to Live with Kelly and Ryan. He talks about Supernatural at about the 12 minute mark. The volume seems to be muted at the beginning, but does kick in.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan says returning to The CW’s Supernatural for its 300th episode after more than a decade away was “a blast.”

“I went up to Vancouver to go shoot a role that I did 14 years ago. They’re on their 300th episode, can you believe it?” Morgan said while serving as guest co-host on Live with Kelly and Ryan. “Yeah, that’s crazy. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Morgan, who boarded the series in its first season in 2005 and appeared across 12 episodes, reprises his role as John Winchester, a once-disappeared hunter of all things supernatural and father of Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki).

The star’s long-awaited return to Supernatural marks his first appearance on the series since 2007, where Winchester’s spirit escaped from Hell to help his sons defeat the demon Azazel before moving on.

“So 14 years ago I played the father of Sam and Dean on that show, the two boys... so yeah, to go back and be able to do that with them was a blast, super cool,” Morgan said.

“We’re incredibly excited to have Jeffrey back for this milestone episode, and think fans will love what we have planned for his character... and a few other guest stars,” executive producer Andrew Dabb said when announcing Morgan’s return in December.

Morgan aired his openness to a return in September 2017, telling a packed Supernatural-centric convention John’s sons “need to have some closure with this guy, and I think that John would like to have some closure, and I think you, the audience, deserves it.”

During a Walker Stalker Cruise Q&A session in February 2018, Morgan joked he would only return to Supernatural after The Walking Dead creator and panel guest Robert Kirkman kills off Morgan’s former Savior leader Negan, to which Kirkman said he’d “never do it.”

“There we go! Never going back,” Morgan teased. “No, if that show ever ends and they’re on like season 400, I said I would love to go back and have some resolution with that character.”

Jared says there’s a pretty epic bar fight
John will not be the only face from the past we see.
We will see an angel we haven’t seen in a while
We may see an earlier version of Cas
There may be time travel
There is a guest star that will play a significant role.
300th episode!
This episode will focus on how the town of Lebanon sees the boys and Cas.
Jacksonville Con occurred during filming.

EW can exclusively announce that Kurt Fuller will reprise his role as Zachariah in Supernatural’s upcoming 300th episode. Fuller first appeared on the show as Zachariah in season 4 and quickly established himself as the kind of angel who means business (and has zero patience for the Winchester brothers). He was last seen in the series’ 100th episode, “Point of No Return,” which aired in season 5. It was in that episode that Dean (Jensen Ackles) drove an angel blade through Zachariah’s skull… which raises the question: How is he back in the 300th?

The details surrounding Zachariah’s return are hard to come by, but seeing as how he’s the second big return in the episode — John Winchester, anyone? — clearly something strange is going on. Then again, when it comes to the Winchesters, something strange is always going on.

“REUNION TIME!”
Jared Padalecki is making an announcement. It’s early December, and he and his Supernatural costar Jensen Ackles are preparing for their final two days of filming the 300th episode (Feb. 7) as demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, respectively. As they walk onto the Men of Letters set on a rainy Thursday, they come face-to-face with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a personal friend and the man who brought Papa John Winchester to life in the show’s pilot (and left the show after season 2). “It’s the culmination of 300 episodes,” Padalecki says of Morgan’s return. After all, John’s disappearance kick-started the brothers’ road trip.

Standing in his little brother’s college apartment, Dean Winchester first uttered those words in the pilot, and in doing so, launched Supernatural’s — and the brothers’ — first big mystery. “I had a good feeling about the show just reading the pilot,” Ackles says. “It had grit, the characters were well-written, and the story had miles to go.” Although he couldn’t quite predict how many miles the journey would be.

Supernatural premiered on The WB in 2005 and has since become the longest-running show in The CW’s history. The idea was simple: two brothers hunting monsters from urban legends, the kinds of things you’d hear about while sitting around a campfire. Bloody Mary? They killed her. Hook Man? Yep, him too. But it didn’t take long for the writers to understand that they might have to broaden the scope of the show if they wanted to get 20-plus episodes (much less 300). “We quickly realized that [conceit] would run out in a hurry, so even early on we expanded our horizons of what the show could be,” executive producer/co-showrunner Robert Singer says. But just how far could they stretch? And would they even get the chance?

Despite surviving the 2006 WB–UPN merger that created The CW, it took years for Supernatural to land on solid ground. “Bob Singer and I were fighting for the show’s survival at the ends of the first three seasons,” says creator Eric Kripke. “We’d have a meeting with the network that we informally called the ‘explain-why-we-should-give-you-another-season’ meeting.” And yet there was something about those conditions that felt right for a show about two humans trying to save the world from superhuman forces. As Dean recently said in a season 14 episode, “Impossible odds—feels like home.” But the land of impossible odds isn’t simply where the show (and the Winchesters) lived in those early years. It’s where they thrived. “In the beginning we almost mischievously wanted to see what we could get away with,” Kripke says. “There weren’t a lot of genre shows on The CW. It was mostly Gossip Girl and 90210. We were always like the goth kid at the back of the class that no one really wanted to pay attention to. So on this little weird horror show, we really got to push some boundaries that hadn’t been attempted in TV. There was no one saying, ‘That’s too crazy.’” So they took risks. They wrote a Groundhog Day-style episode called “Mystery Spot” that saw Dean die more than 100 times in one hour. They created “Hollywood Babylon,” an episode where Sam and Dean investigated a haunted horror-movie set. They produced “Ghostfacers,” an episode shot to look like a reality show about ghost hunting. “We always felt like we were on tenterhooks a little, but it helped us in a way,” Singer says. “We said, ‘If they don’t like us, let’s be bold.’ ” And in season 4, they made perhaps their biggest, boldest decision yet: They introduced angels (and therefore a much more religious story line) into the fold, which Singer identifies as the show’s biggest turning point. “I was concerned that would be a bridge too far,” Padalecki says of the angelic decision. “I wondered, ‘Are we going to turn o a lot of the people that came here to watch a scary movie?’” Kripke himself had fought the idea for years, until a pre–season 4 epiphany came to him while he was washing his face, of all things. “I realized the supernatural world was unbalanced,” Kripke says. “There was only evil. So I walked in the writers’ room on day one of season 4 and said, ‘Okay, there’s going to be angels…but they’re dicks!’”

Thus began what Kripke, who’s since created Revolution and co-created Timeless, still believes is one of the best hours of television he’s ever written: the season 4 premiere. “Lazarus Rising” introduced Castiel, the show’s first and longest-lasting angel. “Right before my scene, [then writer] Sera [Gamble] said, ‘Your life is about to change,’” remembers Misha Collins, who plays Castiel. He adds with a laugh, “I was like, ‘You’re so full of yourself.’” But Collins’ life did just that when he shifted from being a guest star to a series regular as his character survived multiple deaths — and even a brief stint as God — to become someone Sam and Dean consider family. “Angels completed the mythology,” Kripke says, and with them, the show was able to build to what writer-turned-showrunner Gamble refers to as the “regularly scheduled apocalypse” at the end of season 5. It was good versus evil. Michael versus Lucifer. Dean versus Sam. And for a while, everyone believed it was the end of the show. But when the network gave them a renewal for season 6, the writers were left to figure out what the heck comes after an apocalypse. The answer? Anything they wanted.

“A benefit of genre is we have such a huge runway in terms of ‘anything can happen,’” then writer and current co-showrunner Andrew Dabb says. “A medical show is limited in the scope of what they can do. We’re not.” So the next few seasons saw Supernatural push even more boundaries, with alternate realities, meta episodes (“The French Mistake,” anyone?), and new villains. That’s not to say everything worked, but that’s the beauty of a long-running show with a devoted audience — everything doesn’t have to work. “Fans would forgive sins of certain episodes because they love watching Sam and Dean,” Singer says. Because saying Supernatural fans like Supernatural is like saying Dean likes pie. It’s not about liking it. It’s about loving it. “I don’t think we have casual fans,” Singer says. “They live and breathe this show.” The #SPNFamily gathers all around the country (and globe) for multiple conventions each year, and every July they ll the largest venue, Hall H, at San Diego Comic-Con. It’s those fans who are devoted to Sam and Dean, even when their Impala might take a wrong turn. “The show’s ability to evolve and adapt is what’s led to it lasting 14 years,” Dabb says, adding, “Theoretically there are still a bunch of Leviathan out there running around that we never dealt with, but we don’t talk about that.”

Limitless options and viewer forgiveness aside, there is one rule the show has to follow — outside of standards and practices, that is. “I credit Bob Singer for instilling from very early on the idea that the show can go anywhere as long as the characters stay true to themselves,” former showrunner Jeremy Carver says. “The core of the show is the bond between the brothers.” With Sam and Dean as its foundation, the show can make episodes like season 11’s “Baby,” which was shot entirely from the perspective of the Impala, or season 13’s “Scoobynatural,” an animated crossover with Scooby-Doo and the gang. “One of the fun takeaways of watching Supernatural is that if you can imagine it, there’s probably a little town somewhere in America where it’s happening,” Gamble says. “It’s unlike any other show, really, in the history of American television.” And 14 seasons in, it’s still finding ways to surprise fans by, say, bringing John Winchester back.

Standing next to his little brother in the Men of Letters bunker, Dean can’t believe what he’s seeing. This time he’s not enlisting his brother to find Dad, because Dad has come to them. And he hasn’t changed much. His beard has more gray in it and his face is thinner, but it will surprise no one that John comes back with a rifle in his hand. (Sorry, Walking Dead fans; the rifle came before Lucille.) But John isn’t the only one who’s changed. Standing across from him, Sam and Dean are no longer the kids who crammed toy army men into the ashtray of the Impala, or even the young men who went looking for him in the pilot. They’ve grown up. Their lives, quite simply, have changed. The same can be said of the actors themselves. In fact, Ackles is currently two years older than Morgan was when he filmed the pilot. “That’s how full circle it all is,” Morgan says. “Like a father would be, I’m very proud of the guys. It makes me get choked up because they’ve done so well here. Episode 300? That’s unheard of.”

As for how John comes back, let’s just say things get weird — don’t they always? — and there’s an altered reality at play. “Our guys are put in a position where they essentially can have a wish granted,” Dabb says. “They’re actually expecting something else, but [John’s return] comes from a place of want by Dean. The need for closure is really what brings John back into their lives.” But John isn’t the only person who comes back into their lives. As with any altered reality, not everything changes for the good. Without getting too specific, whatever brings John back also causes the return of Zachariah (Kurt Fuller), the no-BS angel who saw Sam and Dean as nothing more than thorns in his side. (Like Kripke said, angels are dicks!) Speaking of angels, this reality also affects Castiel in… certain ways. This time the boys are dealing with a different (though not entirely unfamiliar) version of their friend.

But for Morgan, who’s been asked for years about returning, it has always been about bringing John back in the right way. “The relationships between these three men were so open, so if I was going to come back, it would be nice to have some closure, especially with Sammy,” Morgan says. And before the hour’s over, both boys will get a moment alone with Dad. “This episode gives Sam a chance to forgive,” Padalecki says. Ackles adds, “For Dean, the whole episode is a dream that he doesn’t want to wake up from. But he knows he has to.”

Back in the bunker’s kitchen where Padalecki declared “reunion time” just hours ago, Sam and Dean are sitting around a table sharing a bottle of whiskey with their father and catching him up on everything he’s missed. Yes, they’ve saved the world (more than once). Yes, Lucifer has a son. But most important, John’s late wife, Mary — the woman he spent his life trying to avenge — is alive. Right then Mary rounds the corner for the moment she never saw coming, but in a strange way has always been waiting for. “Everything’s right in the world in this bubble of time,” Samantha Smith, who plays Mary, says of the couple’s reunion. “It’s very romantic.”

But as the Winchesters know a bit too well, all good things must come to an end. And when this is said and done, Sam and Dean will return to their life, driving down crazy street next to each other. Because despite the show hitting 300 episodes, nobody’s ready to call it quits just yet. “I don’t think we’re ready to throw in the towel,” Ackles says. “We’ve still got a little gas in the tank.” Put another way, Sam and Dean still got work to do.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan on returning to his Supernatural family after more than a decade away from EW!

“Car coming through!” It’s a rainy December day in Vancouver as Supernatural’s crew members clear out of the way of an incoming vehicle. Despite the dreary weather, excitement fills the air, because everyone knows who’s inside the car. They just haven’t seen him yet.

Seconds later, out steps a scruffy Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the man who brought John Winchester to life all those years ago. He’s got a cigarette in his hand and John’s boots on his feet as he’s ushered through the rain and mud to the reunion he’s been waiting for: He’s about to see his Baby.

“Driving from set to where the Impala was, I was getting excited,” Morgan tells EW. “I was like, ‘oh god, I get to get in the Impala!”

And get in he does, sitting in the driver’s seat of the 1967 Impala and preparing to say his first line as John Winchester in more than a decade. Morgan’s reunion with Baby is the first of many as he returns to the show after 12 years away. And in the middle of it all, EW sat down with Morgan on the Supernatural set to discuss his big (though temporary) comeback.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Fans have asked you about returning many times over the years, and you’ve always said…
JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: “Every time a fan asked, I always said the same thing: ‘I’m totally open to returning. It’s about the story.’ Because I’m very good friends with Jensen [Ackles] and Jared [Padalecki], and we’ve talked about it and it was always, ‘Before the show goes off the air, I hope to get on.’ Jensen called and said, ‘Hey would you be interested in doing our 300th?’ I wasn’t going to be working at this time so absolutely, sure.

So I got on the phone with [co-showrunner] Andrew [Dabb] and I said, ‘It’s about story.’ It’s kind of important if you’re going to bring this guy back, there’s gotta be an endgame. The relationships between these three men were so open, so if I was going to come back, it would be nice to have some closure, especially with Sammy. So it went from there, and we worked it out to where we think it’s a good story and a really good way for John to come back into the fold.”

What was it like returning to a character you haven’t played in more than a decade?
“To step into it again, it’s like wearing an old pair of boots. I’m friends with these guys so it’s a joy to come in. Today was my first day and you just kind of sit down and do it. It’s fun and it’s easy. I remember very well what I did then. I remember the story and I remember playing with these guys. If I hadn’t been seeing and talking to these guys the last 10 years maybe it would’ve been a little bit more of a nervous situation, but I’ve been doing this a long time. I feel like I’ve been doing it forever and I really haven’t stopped working since I was last on this set. Like a father would be, I’m very proud of the guys.

They are two of the best guys. They’re as genuine and as cool as they get and I’m sitting here doing the scene with them and it makes me get choked up because they’ve done so well here. Episode 300? That’s unheard of. That’s a hard thing to do, so huge props to not just these two but the whole crew. It’s funny walking back into the stage today and all the crew guys are coming up to me that were here on day one. Same guys! It’s amazing. The turnover on the shows that I’m normally a part of, they’re there maybe a week or two and then they’re like, ‘I’m done.’ [Laughs] But this show, there’s something special about it obviously. It keeps people wanting to be here.”

What does it mean for John to get to see his boys and his wife again?
“I think it means the world to John certainly. And also for me, the actor that plays John, I think it means almost equally as much. There’s always been a need for closure with these characters and their father, especially with Jared’s character. Kid’s a disaster because of his father apparently. [Laughs] My thing was always, if I come back, I gotta fix that. There’s gotta be an opportunity to mend that relationship and I think that that’s hopefully what the audience is anticipating.

But it always bugged me that the John that I played is different than the John that has been portrayed since I haven’t been around. I really wanted the opportunity to be able to come back and make amends in a way and try to fix the sullied name of this character. But more than that, it’s three friends, life lived. It feels like we’ve been friends for a lifetime now, getting to reunite in a place that we love and that we met and do what we do and I think that is super cool. So not only does John win in getting to come back and see his boys and Mary again and hopefully make some amends, it’s just as cool for me, the actor, to be able to come back and see everybody.”

This show is hitting 300 episodes for a number of reasons, but as someone who’s worked on many different shows and sets, what makes this set different?
“That’s the easiest question. It’s because of those two dudes. It begins and ends with Jensen and Jared. I’ve never seen guys that are here every day — there are not scenes in this show without them, they don’t get time off, they’re here every day, and they have families just like I do. I know how hard it is to be away from my family and I know how grumpy that makes me. They show up every day, they’re not grumpy, they know their sh-t, they’re pros.

And they’re not only all that, but they’re also genuinely nice. Because of that, these crew members that could have gone on to do whatever they want, they stay here for those two guys. They’ve got two great leads that set an example for everyone else and it’s how it should be done. They’re just good guys and I love ’em. That’s the simple answer: It’s because of those two. There’s a couple more [people] that have been here just as long and they’re also equally as great but it really starts with number one and two on the call sheet. They set an example for cast and crew.”

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN RETURNS FOR THE 300TH EPISODE – Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) look to occult lore for a solution to their latest problem, but instead of a resolution, they find much more than either of them had anticipated. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (John Winchester) guest stars. The episode was directed by Robert Singer and written by Andrew Dabb & Meredith Glynn. (#1413). Original Airdate 2/7/2019.

John Winchester didn’t have an easy life. When Yellow Eyes killed the woman he loved in the pilot of Supernatural, he made a choice: He would get revenge on that demon no matter what it took. But that meant that he would have to juggle raising Sam and Dean with a life of hunting, and the brothers have spent a lot of time figuring out how they feel about that decision and the way it affected their lives. But for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who returns as John in the 300th episode, John, at his core, wasn’t too difficult to figure out.

“I don’t think he’s as screwed-up as other people do,” Morgan tells EW. “I think he is a guy who’s got a tremendous amount of love for his family. He was willing to die for his sons, willing to put himself in a place to where he could lose his life for revenge on what killed his wife. So as much has been said about John or that I’ve heard about John, I think what is missing is that he shows love in different ways. Maybe he wasn’t a big hugger and he didn’t say the right things when he should’ve — and there’s a bigger picture about getting your kids into hunting ghosts that I should acknowledge — but I think at his core he really loved his family and was willing to sacrifice everything. So I never looked or played John in a way that there was any malice toward his sons.”

Of course, Morgan’s journey with the character might’ve ended in season 2, but the show has continued to reference John, often sharing new stories about the character or even having Matt Cohen on to play a younger version of Sam and Dean’s dad. “I used to go to conventions and people would be furious with me, and I didn’t know what they were mad about,” Morgan says. “But the John that I played certainly wasn’t this a—hole of a man.”

And when John returns in the upcoming 300th episode, he’ll get a chance to really think about the choices he made, particularly as a father to Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles). “As a parent, he could’ve done things better certainly, and I think whenever we get a chance to look back at our lives, we all think we could’ve done things better,” Morgan says. “In this episode he sees what he has done and what he has created with his sons, and there’s going to be moments where we get to address those with each son separately and as a unit, and that’s what makes this episode special.”

Misha Collins explains what Castiel's up to in Supernatural episode 300 from EW!

“In the 300th episode, we really are kind of reincarnating an earlier version of Castiel,” actor Misha Collins says in the video above, adding that it’s the “Castiel that we knew from season 4, season 5.” So naturally, the change will affect his wardrobe… or at least that was the plan. “At the time, Castiel had a different tie,” Collins says, before explaining that “I have been on this show for so long that the ties have literally disintegrated.”

Neckwear aside, playing a different version of Castiel allowed Collins to notice a few things about his character. “It was actually interesting to get to play that [version of Castiel] again because I realized just how un-fun Castiel used to be,” Collins says with a laugh. “He’s a real pain in the ass, so I’m kind of glad that Cas has evolved to where he is now.”

John is there as a sort of wish granted for Dean.
John will not be the only face from the past we see.
We will see an angel we haven’t seen in a while (update: it’s Zachariah)
We may see an earlier version of Cas
There will be time travel
There is a guest star that will play a significant role. (Update: it’s John)
300th episode!
This episode will focus on how the town of Lebanon sees the boys and Cas.
Jacksonville Con occurred during filming.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did your return come about?
KURT FULLER: Long ago I played a lot of bad guys because my first job, Ghostbusters II, was a bad guy, so that’s the way it goes. I was told I was going to read for [Supernatural], and it was a good guy. He seemed like a very nice guy. He was an angel, he was friendly, and he only turned really, really bad on the third episode, when it just turned so south. I was quite upset about it. Then, I’m at home and it’s two years later, and I get a “Dear Kurt” letter from [show creator] Eric Kripke: “Dear Kurt, I want to tell you how great you are in the show.” And I’m thinking they’re gonna make me a regular. I’m going to finally get on the Supernatural gravy train which has been running down the track. “Unfortunately, we need a big event for our hundredth episode, so we’re going to kill you.” Okay? All right.

And then I go, “Yeah, you’re going to kill me, but nobody ever really dies on Supernatural.” And they said, “Well, no, you’re getting killed with an angel blade and your wings burn.” I said, “Well, what does that mean?” “If your wings burn, you don’t come back. You’re dead-dead. And the knife goes up through your mouth into your brain.” I go, “Okay, I’m dead-dead. I get it.” I wasn’t expecting anything. I’ve gone on with my life, everything’s been fine, the kids are good, my wife seems happy. I get a call out of the blue: “They want to know if you would go and do Supernatural for the 300th episode.” I go, “300th episode?” And I said, “Sure I’d do it, are you kidding me? Yeah, absolutely.” So they wrote it, and here I am, happy to do it.

What is it about this character that makes you want to return and do it again?
Zachariah is really funny. He thinks he’s hilarious, he thinks he’s charming. He knows he’s smarter than everybody else, and he knows that if people would believe him, he’s right. He can fix everything. But he doesn’t have to be mean, he doesn’t want to. He really wants to just have people laugh with him and go, “You know what? You’re right, I’ll do that. Okay, let’s go have a drink.” But it usually ends up with a lot of blood and a lot of death.

Did you have to do anything to remind yourself of what you did 200 episodes ago? Did you watch old episodes?
I didn’t have very much time because I was working on something else. But I did go back and look at the shows that I did and reminded myself of what I was like and what was going on then. But the show, it has really changed. They’re not doing the same thing every week. It’s really very compelling. I was so struck by the sense of loss in [the 300th] episode. [Sam and Dean], they’re just out there in the ocean, nobody else is around, and it’s just them, and they’ve gotta swim, they’ve gotta stay afloat. I think that’s the most compelling thing about the show.

In terms of what fans can expect from your return, do you feel like it’s pretty classic Zachariah?
It is. It is classic Zachariah. He hasn’t changed or grown, or had any experiences. It is fun, and he’s still clever and up to his old tricks.

What is the fan reaction like for you, for a character like Zachariah?
Well, when I was doing it, a lot of people would call me, “Oh, Zachariah, you glorious bastard,” which I thought was a great description. And then there was the element that loved to hate me, and then there was the element that hated me and hated to hate me and didn’t want me around. When I got killed killed, some people were like, “Oh, man, don’t kill a good bad guy.” But I always knew that was gonna happen, because you don’t do the things I do and live in these shows, there’s a moral code. You’re not gonna hang around being that bad.

As someone who’s worked on many shows, what do you feel like it is about Supernatural that is special or that keeps people engaged?
First of all, if you look at just Jared [Padalecki] and Jensen [Ackles], they truly are brothers. They are brothers in life. It is their relationship in the show, which is informed by their relationship not on the show. It’s their chemistry and their shared experience that is really compelling. One truly cares about them and feels for them. Like I said, [Sam and Dean’s] lives, they’re tragic. There’s a tragedy there along with everything else. Along with them being the heroes, there’s a real sadness underlying it. I don’t think shows should be afraid of that, and I love that this show is not afraid of that. People can handle it. I think it’s that duality of the hero and the two sad guys, basically, who don’t have their dad and don’t have a normal life that makes it so you can’t not watch it.

Supernatural bosses on why now's the right time for John's return from EW!

The very idea of bringing John Winchester back has been a discussion within the Supernatural fandom for years. But it wasn’t until it was time to start planning the show’s 300th episode that the writers realized it might finally be time for dad to return. “The 100th episode was just an episode,” co-showrunner Robert Singer tells EW. “The 200th was so special. It was bold and great. We knew we weren’t necessarily going to top that so we said, ‘What would make the fans happy? What would they like to see? Bringing John back.’ So we sort of built the idea around that.”

Singer says that the episode is very “John-centric, with co-showrunner Andrew Dabb adding, “The 300th is in a lot of ways, for Sam and Dean, about home. You’re dealing with two guys who, when this story started and for the bulk of our show, never had a home. It was motel rooms and the Impala and they’d have a place they’d stay for a few weeks or maybe a few months at a time, but that’s pretty much it. Now Sam and Dean have a home, they have a family, and they have Lebanon and that’s really where the idea started. Like okay, what does the town of Lebanon think of these guys? And conversely, what do Sam and Dean think of the town? And then when the idea of Jeffrey Dean Morgan was floated it was great, because not only is it awesome to have him back for a number of different reasons but it’s thematically consistent because suddenly it’s about home, it’s about family, it’s about having that family dinner, it’s about coming home in a more emotional way.”

And seeing as how Sam and Dean have been through so much since they last saw their father in season 2 — including becoming father figures to Jack — the dynamics will have shifted when John returns to his boys’ lives. “The way you react to your dad when you’re 25 is much different than the way you react to that person when you’re 40,” Dabb says. “The fact that the guys were older now and could have different reactions to John was what made it exciting because they’re not going to have the same conversations they had in seasons 1 and 2 of the show.”

But just because the guys are able to have these conversations with John doesn’t mean their story is even close to over. (It doesn’t even mean John’s story is over.) “They finally get some closure with their father in a way that doesn’t feel like the end of the show,” Dabb says. “t’s not like, ‘And now roll credits, we’ll never see you again!’ It feels like it allows these guys to put some, not all, of their 14 years of baggage down and move on to the future maybe with some new knowledge, maybe a little bit more unencumbered. Because if we had just brought him back and it had been like, ‘And then they go and hunt a demon together,’ it wouldn’t have been satisfying.”

In 2016, EW sat down with Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki as they were just starting to film the show’s 12th season. That was the year the series would hit 250 episodes, and when asked about the show’s end at the time, the stars both talked about their desire to reach at least 300 episodes before calling it quits.

But now that the show is in its 14th season with its 300th episode set to air on Feb. 7, the guys still aren’t ready to hang up Sam and Dean’s flannels just yet. “300 was a big number,” Ackles says, recalling that 2016 conversation. “I don’t think we’ve ever looked really beyond the next season. We keep our heads down and keep moving forward. If you saw any part of the marathon that he and I just experienced, I was certainly channeling that: head down, keep moving forward, you’ll get there. Wherever there is, I don’t know, and wherever there is for the Winchesters I don’t know, but we’ll just keep moving forward until there’s nowhere to go.”

Padalecki adds, “As cheesy as it sounds, I feel like we’ll know. But at this point in time, I’m more concerned with the legacy of the show and with the quality of it than I am a season or episode number. There are still stories I want to see.”

That being said, there’s one thing both stars agree on: They don’t want to stay too long at the party. “It’s the old adage of you always want to leave them wanting more,” Ackles says. “We don’t want to run it into the ground. And I don’t think that will happen. I still think people care enough about the show, both that make it and that watch it, to not let that happen.”

As for why episode 300 isn’t the perfect ending point, Ackles adds, “I don’t think we were ready to throw in the towel. We’ve still got a little gas in the tank.”

When TV Guide spoke to the cast on the red carpet for the 300th episode celebration, the stars were naturally very tight-lipped about the landmark episode, but we did get a few clues about how it's all going to go down from Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.

"There have been some rewrites," Ackles told TV Guide. "The first pass was great and there were some folks — the guys that make way bigger decisions than me — who were like, 'I think we need to punch it up a bit.' So they went back and revamped, and I think it's going to be pretty epic."

Padalecki sympathized with the conundrum of writing an episode worthy of this anniversary, saying, "I feel for the writers because they have to decide if they're going to go crazy meta, just a true shout out to the fans like Episode 200, or if they're going to make it an episode that still progresses the storyline or some mixture of the two. It's a daunting task, no doubt."

Discover your new favorite show: Watch This Now!

We now know that Sam and Dean's father, John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) will make an appearance in Episode 300, thanks to a wish-granting scenario that will occur for Dean. The elder Winchester won't be the only one to get closure from John's visit though. Padalecki told TV Guide that this episode will be very cathartic for Sam, who always had a turbulent relationship with his father.

"There's some scenes that also make it come full circle," Padalecki said. "For Sam specifically... we see [him] get some reconciliation that he hasn't really had, he's been desiring. He didn't even know he was really looking for this. We see him tie up some loose ends and really make the most of his situation, and it's a pretty awesome situation."

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction to reading the 300th episode script?
SAMANTHA SMITH: I gasped. I was totally surprised but then it made total sense because I thought [John] was going to have to come back at some point, and I thought it would always be the very last episode of the show. I thought I was never going to come back until the very last episode of the show either but the way they’ve done it is so smart because it’s temporary. It has the built-in Supernatural tragic element to it.

What does this moment, getting to see John again, mean for Mary?
I feel like Mary’s been searching ever since she came back and she’s been a little rudderless. Her boys are the only thing that she has left from her old life and they’re not the same either. So this moment is going to set her back is my guess. I have a feeling she’s going to take a hit from this.

The last time we saw you and Jeffrey Dean Morgan together was the pilot. How do you feel Mary’s changed since then?
All of Mary’s appearances, Amy Gumenick’s portrayals aside because that was a whole different thing, were canonized, perfect, ghostly. I call her Nightgown Mary. Except for the one appearance where she was hallucinations where she could be mean and when she was Eve. But Mary was always this particular thing. And when she came back, she was a whole person with flaws and opinions and that was an adjustment but even since she’s come back, she continues to change and evolve rather quickly. I love where she’s come. I love Mary, all of her, even her foibles. It’s tremendous fun trying to keep up with her.

Do you feel like you’re getting to play a different version of her in the 300th?
Yes, happier Mary, because all the Winchesters always have so much weight on them and particularly in this moment, everything’s right in the world for this bubble of time. And John only knows Mary from before so she gets to be that in that moment.

As an actress, what’s it like to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan again?
I’ve seen him a couple times out in the wild at conventions but I haven’t worked with him since the pilot and it was very brief in the pilot. I think I have a little indication in my brain of what it’s like for Jensen [Ackles] and Jared [Padalecki] because I think in their brain, when they, as Sam and Dean, picture mom, it’s me. So when I have been talking about John, [Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s] been in my head, so it doesn’t feel that removed for me.

How do you describe the moment when she first sees John?
It’s very romantic. It’s a very romantic, simple moment. That’s what’s great about this whole reunion of the family — it’s pretty simple so it can go deep.

Supernatural's Secret Ingredient Is Three Tons Of Steel, Even 300 Episodes Later from Gamespot

After 300 episodes, Supernatural's Chevy Impala is still rumbling down the road.
By Chris E. Hayner on February 1, 2019

When Supernatural first premiered on The WB back in 2005--the same year YouTube came into existence--it was introduced as the story of two brothers, reunited and fighting the evil forces their family had been chasing for years. Now, 300 episodes later, Supernatural is still exactly that. While secondary characters have come and gone, it always comes back to the tale of Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and his brother Dean (Jensen Ackles), traveling from town-to-town and vanquishing whatever otherworldly forces seem to be wreaking havoc.

There's a third piece of the Winchester puzzle that's been with the brothers since the very beginning, though, and it's as integral to the formula as anyone or anything else on the show. When Dean rolled back into his brother's life in the show's pilot, he did it in his trusty 1967 Chevrolet Impala, nicknamed "Baby" and passed down to him by his dad.

Baby, in many ways, is the heart and soul of Supernatural. For the brothers, it is the armory of weapons they use to fight against any number of demonic entities, their home on long nights with no motel room in sight, and the vessel that takes them to a new locale each week. The car has even had its own episode of the series in Season 11's "Baby," which told a story from the Impala's point of view.

What's more, Baby is the one piece of the Winchesters' past that they've been able to hold onto. The one thing that's always there for them, regardless of circumstances, ever since it was passed to Dean from their father. "I think if Dean were a child Baby would be his blanket," Ackles explained to GameSpot at Supernatural's 300th episode celebration. "That's his safe place. [It's] kind of the touchstone of who he is. It represents a lot, and I think it represents a lot to the show. It's the one constant in his life other than his brother."

A constant isn't exactly something Dean--of his brother, for that matter--has the luxury of, given the life of a hunter of supernatural entities. While it may be the "Family business," as Dean has reminded viewers of several times over the years, it's a truly lonely existence, even with your brother at your side.

After all, the character is nearly 40 years old, and his entire life is wrapped up in his work, his brother, and his car. He's not the kind of person that you truly believe will ever be willing to settle down and live peacefully because he thrives on the chase and having no specific place he considers home other than the driver's seat of his Impala. It's something that's simply his.

"For somebody who lives kind of a vagabond life and a nomad existence, to have a constant like that, to have something that is his and that is his domain is, I think is really important to the character," Ackles continued. "You'll see a scene in an episode that we're filming, we just finished filming, where Dean says, 'I need to go clear my head. I need to go for a ride in Baby,'' and Sam says, 'Well, let me go with you.'' He says, 'No, no, no, I just need me and Baby and a long stretch of highway.'"

While to outsiders who haven't taken the ride with Supernatural over the last 300 episodes, it may seem like Baby is just a car, fans know better. With total respect to Misha Collins, who plays the angel Castiel and has become one of the show's most beloved characters, Baby is the third lead of the series. What would have been three tons of steel on most shows is a fully fleshed out character on Supernatural.

And according to executive producer Robert Singer, who also directed the 300th episode of the series, she's one of the reasons why, all of these years later, Supernatural is still speeding down the highway and has already been renewed for an impressive 15th season. "It's as much of a character as anyone else in the show," he said. "And yeah, [we] keep waiting for it to break down, but it's still humming."

Monsters, ghosts, demons, witches, the devil, God’s sister, a few apocalypses, alternate realities and iffy ratings: The Winchester boys have survived them all and arrived at the 300th episode of CW's “Supernatural” unscathed.

Well, mostly. They have died and been possessed by otherworldly beings, so that’s bound to take a toll. Nevertheless, evil-hunting brothers in flannel Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) continue their hellacious path in the "Supernatural” milestone (Thursday, 8 EST/PST), which reunites the siblings with their father John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

The Winchesters are hard to kill (at least permanently), and so is their horror show, which this week was renewed for a 15th season. The last vestige of the former WB network could have merely showcased handsome guys whacking vampires and werewolves in a monster-of-the-week format, until they became big Hollywood stars. Instead, they became a deep, dark and wonderful mythology of things that go bump in the night and two righteous dudes at the center of it.

Here are seven reasons (a holy number, naturally) why “Supernatural” has carried on so successfully with its wayward sons and why it may not be stopping anytime soon.

Dean Winchester is the best superhero on TV.
Fun fact: Ackles was on the short list to play Marvel’s Captain America, but he wasn’t available because of his “Supernatural” commitments. Things turned out OK: Chris Evans did well in his stead and Ackles crafted a terrific, man-crush-worthy do-gooder with reckless tendencies, an insatiable hunger for junk food and a willingness to sacrifice body and soul if it means saving loved ones and/or humanity. Also, unlike Dean, Green Arrow never killed Hitler.

But Sam Winchester is the show’s beating heart.
The younger of the two bros is the epitome of empathy, the emotional yin to Dean’s two-fisted yang. A more reluctant hero – and the onetime vessel for frequent big bad Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) – Sam often finds himself at odds with Dean because of his caring nature: Most recently, Sam was dead set on talking his sibling out of burying himself alive to keep villainous archangel Michael (currently locked away in Dean’s subconscious) permanently at bay.

verything changed when stuff got biblical.
After the first three seasons of creature-killing, ghost-busting and demon-dealing, “Supernatural” found its groove by introducing the angel Castiel (Misha Collins), who saved Dean from hell and kicked off the show’s defining mythos. Demons are bad, yet most angels are jerks, too, resentful of mankind for its place in God’s eyes. And then there's the Lord Himself, an enigmatic writer named Chuck (Rob Benedict).

‘Supernatural’ is modern Americana.
Although the dangerous stakes usually involve civilization as well as the afterlife (and don't forget Apocalypse World!), the show is essentially one long road trip that’s taken the Winchesters from sea to shining sea to battle various forms of malevolence. In this divided nation, these guys are a uniting force who love pie and cheeseburgers and show us that we’re all in this together.

There’s always a healthy supply of self-awareness.
Other than, say, “Criminal Minds,” a show doesn't run 14 seasons by doing the same old weekly procedural format. To switch up things, “Supernatural” has aired several “meta” episodes over the years that took the Winchesters to a bewildering world of TV tropes (medical drama, '90s comedy), a “Supernatural” fan convention, a high-school musical, an animated mystery with Scooby-Doo, and even the “real” set of the show where everybody thinks they’re guys named Jared and Jensen.

Have awesome car, will travel.
One of those out-there hours featured a story told from the perspective of "Baby," Dean’s beloved 1967 Chevy Impala The black muscle machine, a throwback to iconic ‘80s vehicles like the “A-Team” van and K.I.T.T. from “Knight Rider,” allows the boys to celebrate the freedom of the open highway, with windows down and classic rock blaring.

The good guys are just that: actually good.
When they’re not possessed, the Winchesters usually are on the side of the angels. (well, some of the angels). Because saving the world doesn’t pay so well and they need of gas, food and hotel money, the guys have done some shady stuff. They’ve been wanted outlaws and made a regular habit of impersonating FBI agents, park rangers and other law enforcers.

But even as during a time when Peak TV wholly embraced the antihero, the Winchesters were always dudes you could believe in. And that’s a mission they’ll maintain until they drive off into the night for good. Or forever, whichever comes first.

‘Supernatural’ Team Talks ‘Homage to the Winchester Family’ 300th Episode from Variety!

For its 200th episode milestone in 2014, “Supernatural” went deeply meta, delivering “almost a pure homage to the #SPNFamily and the crazy things that happened to the show, from the books being written about it to the Clue games to the Funko figures,” series star Jared Padalecki recalls. Now five years later the show is hitting its 300th episode and Padalecki says the focus is on creating “an homage to the Winchester family.”

For the episode entitled “Lebanon,” executive producers Bob Singer and Andrew Dabb “wanted to go for something that had a lot of heart to it,” Singer says. In that regard, having Jeffrey Dean Morgan reprise his role of Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam’s (Padalecki) dad John Winchester was the “centerpiece of the story.”

In looking for ways to rid Dean of the Archangel Michael, who has possessed him on and off since the end of the 13th season, Ackles says his character comes across something “almost like a genie bottle” that will “give you what your heart desires the most.” Even though Dean is telling everyone he wants to get rid of Michael, “what he truly desires is to see his dad again,” Ackles says, and so that is what happens.

John’s re-emergence in his family’s life allows for storytelling in which “John looks at his sons not as boys but as men,” Ackles continues, which is something both he and Padalecki have wanted to see explored for a long time.

“The last time John and Sam really had a relationship was when Sam went to college, really before the show started,” Padalecki points out. “You think about your parents or your grandparents or whoever you’ve lost and you think, ‘I think they’d really like me now.’”

Dabb notes that it is also about putting the nuclear family back together for one special episode of television. “The core of ‘Supernatural’ has always been family, and Sam and Dean, from the very first shot of the show, were victims of a broken family — in a crazy, supernatural way, but were still broken,” he says. “The last 14 years were them recovering from that — putting together a family of their own with Bobby and Castiel, having their mother come back into their lives, and now their father. They have some really emotional conversations with him and conversations they wouldn’t have had at age 23.”

The episode title speaks to the larger world around the Winchesters, though. “We’re getting a glimpse of how things could have been,” says Misha Collins of the “altered reality” tone to the piece. “We’re getting to see a version of Castiel where he’s almost more back to where we first met him: he’s really just a soldier. In a way, it’s what he would have been if Sam and Dean hadn’t become important figures in his life.”

And the Kansans who observe these mysterious men coming and going at all hours in their 1967 Chevy Impala will also play an integral, even if somewhat lighter, part in the episode. “In the post office the post mistress, for whatever reason, doesn’t care for Sam, has a crush on Dean,” Singer says.

It’s about pulling back in certain moments to see other characters, some of whom will recur later in the season, react to Sam and Dean.

“What’s kind of unspoken is they’ve been living in this one town for multiple years now and they haven’t clued anybody in [to the supernatural], so why is that and what does everybody think about them?” Dabb says. “Sam and Dean have always had family because they’ve always had each other, but they’ve only recently gotten a home [and] a home is not about the house you live in, it’s about the community. We’ve never really explored that community, and the 300th episode is the start.”

Rob Hayter @robhayter 2 hours ago
#tbt to that time I worked on the 300th episode of @cw_supernatural Congratulations to @jarpad @JensenAckles @mishacollins and the rest of cast, crew, creative team. #spnfamily. Ride on... ✊
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TVLine isn’t done celebrating Supernatural‘s tear-filled 300th episode. In our exclusive video from the installment’s official behind-the-scenes featurette, Jeffrey Dean Morgan admits that he’s recognized as a couple of famous characters. But for viewers of the long-running CW series, there’s only one that matters.

“I think I’ve done three roles in my life that I will forever be known as playing, and it’s Denny [from Grey’s Anatomy] and Negan [from The Walking Dead] and John Winchester [from Supernatural],” Morgan says. “And so John Winchester is part of my life almost on a daily basis with fans.”

Morgan’s long-awaited return as the deceased patriarch in last night’s milestone hour “was always something that was in the cards, but it was almost kind of like an ace in the hole,” star Jensen Ackles describes in the video, which also offers glimpses of Morgan’s on-set reunion with the crew and a candid moment with Ackles.

Adds Morgan: “I’m blessed to be in their lives and be able to come back 12 years later, and to step into the Winchester boots is pretty cool.”

The full featurette about the 300th episode will be available on digital platforms with the purchase of a Season Pass on Tuesday, Feb. 12.

Zenia Marshall @ZeniaaMarshall 15 hours ago
Happy 300th episode to the #Supernatural family's cast & crew to the amazing fans! ?? So honored to be a part of it and to have worked with the kindest and loveliest onscreen bad-asses @jarpad @JensenAckles @mishacollins ??? #idorkedit #whoops ?‍♀️ @cw_spn @TheCW

After much teasing, Jeffrey Dean Morgan finally made his return to Supernatural last night (February 7) for its special 300th episode.

His character John Winchester was reunited with his sons Sam and Dean thanks to magic shenanigans, and there were plenty of tears and healing old wounds.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Plucking their dad out of the past meant that time threatened to change for the worse, and the brothers had to make the tough decision to say goodbye again before the changes become permanent.

While the boys will remember what happened, it's unclear if John will, something that TVLine put to the show's boss Andrew Dabb.

He said: "I think it would create some problems for us, time travel-wise, if he remembered everything. He thinks it is a dream. And it didn’t change him, it didn’t change our history, but I would like to think it did, for maybe just a small amount of time, soften him toward Sam [and] Dean.

"The John we see in season 1 is very much not the John we’ve talked about who existed before Sam went away. That John was much more hard-edged… And I would like to think that, possibly, this dream, this experience that happened, marks that turning point."

Spoiler alert: This post contains plot from the 300th episode of Supernatural.

John Winchester’s return might have been short-lived, but it gave Sam and Dean exactly what they needed: Closure. In Supernatural‘s 300th episode, the boys were able to catch their dad up on what they’ve been up to — saving the world and whatnot — and experience something for the first time: A family dinner with both of their parents. The hour was extremely emotional, and now, EW has an exclusive clip from a special featurette on the 300th episode, which shows actors Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, along with co-showrunner Andrew Dabb, discuss the episode.

“It’s not about reopening old wounds,” Dabb says of the reunion. “It’s about, okay I’ve got this wound, I understand it, how can I move on from it? I think that’s what adulthood and maturity is.”

In the episode, both brothers were given a moment with John, and as Morgan puts it, “I think that there is some forgiveness.”

Janelle @garth_spn24 Feb 7
I’ve watched #Supernatural since Pilot aired & tonight will watch the 300th episode! What a milestone for our show & so very proud of @JensenAckles & @jarpad for bringing life to Sam & Dean Winchester! Thanks to all the cast & crew & @therealKripke for his creation!3️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ #SPN300
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Eric Kripke @therealKripke
In honor of #SPN300, here's my original #SPN pitch from 2004. The pilot story is very different, but the tone always rang clear to me. Could never have imagined what this show became and the good it's done. Humbled and grateful beyond words to you all. #SPNFamily @cw_spn
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kalecartel @kalecartel Feb 7
The #SPNFamily gave me a home when I was without one. A huge congrats to the entire Cast & Crew of #Supernatural. #SPN300 airs tonight, so here’s a little tribute to @therealKripke and @cw_spn and his “Star Wars in truck stop America.” @andrewdabb @robertberens @SuperWiki
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Samantha Smith @SamSmithTweets Feb 7
THESE. GUYS. What a gift it was for me to have the experience of filming this episode with them. I loved every minute, even if I cried for almost all of them. ❤️ #SPN300 #Supernatural
@jarpad @JensenAckles @JDMorgan
ps: send your Kleenex bills to @andrewdabb & @Merecuda
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Zenia Marshall @ZeniaaMarshall Feb 8
Another appreciation post for these #Supernatural amigos!! You guys rocked to work with and helped make set an absolute blast!!! Lots of love to u guys ??????? @SkylarRadzion @CoryGruter @AyzeeKay and Eric Bempong!!! ??? @cw_spn
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Matty Rogers @Poopsmoothie27 4 hours ago
Congrats On the big 300 #supernatural Designed a new one for ya'll to celebrate with. Now available at my @TeePublic store. http://ow.ly/dEN850l5ucF #spnfamily #spn #fink #hotrod
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